Friday, July 8, 2011

This week we learned about the letter E-short E. I made a new printable pack to help with some of the concepts I wanted to teach my children and am sharing it with you in case some of the would be helpful to you as well. The pack can be downloaded here: Letter E Printable Pack

All the graphics in this pack are either from Microsoft Freebie clip art, or from the adorable graphics I bought from Just So Scrappy.

When I make my packs I am trying to make something for each of my children, so there is a wide variety of learning levels in the pack.

For our letter E lesson, we started by reading the fable 'The Elephant and the Blind Men.' I put out photos of elephants to help with understanding of the story. We read the 'Jain' version of the fable because it was a bit easier to understand IMO and also it states what each blind man's description BEFORE he says the body part he is touching. So, I had the kids guess which body part was being named. They did a great job with this!

We then discussed our eye-sight, which is an E word but not one we focused on. We used our Guidecraft Feel and Find to practice feeling without seeing. One of the pieces even got ME!

We played a game of Go Fish using the color match go-fish game from my set. The pack includes 2 pages of four colors each, print each page 4 times to have 8 different possible sets. I borrowed the card holders from our LeapFrog My Cards game set. I'm pretty sure we could not have played without them. Highly recommended for any card games with little people!

Afterwards, Mustang played her own memory game to find matches. She yelled Bingo! after every match she found. It was pretty funny.

Then it was time to explore the shelves, so let me show you what was on them.

PRACTICAL LIFE:

Elephant cutting strips.

I put this work out with Charger in mind and boy did he know it! It was the very first thing he did and he stayed with it for quite awhile. I think there were only 2 or three not cut apart when he left, and honestly I think he missed them.

Peanut Pouring

I thought this idea was brilliant. I put peanuts in plastic popcorn containers and they (most likely Mini Cooper) could pour them back and forth. She tried it for a few moments. There were a lot of new things on the shelves, so hopefully there will be more interest.

I just put this out yesterday and neither Mustang or Charger chose it so I dont have any three part in action, but Mini Cooper gladly used them for her object matching cards! The set includes: Elephant, Elk, Eggplant, Eskimo, Eggs and Engine (I make the cards based on our alphabet box).

Sight Word Spelling

After I saw this adorable post on Counting Coconuts I knew I had to incorporate the idea into our learning. I posted the picture on my Pinterest (addicting) board, and a friend suggested I use Scrabble tiles-which I got a few weeks back for a quater at a yard sale. So, I put them (and the little trays) to use!

This set includes the site words is, a, the, here, mother. These are the sight words that have been presented in our BJU curriculum thus far.

Mustang did pretty well with this, though she wanted to line all the letters up in her try. I encouraged her to just spell one word at a time and it went a lot better.

Word Family Cars
Sorry there arent any better pictures of this one! I know I set up the photo, apparently I got distracted and didnt take it. This set includes 4 word family cars- in, it, en and et. The set also includes elephants with the words net, set, wet, sin, win, tin, hen, ten, hit, and sit. The object is to put the right elephants in the right family car. I attached envelopes to the back of the cars and cut them off so they werentspan> noticed. This way, Mustang could slide the elephants 'into' the cars. **I chose the word families and words based on the letters that Mustang has been introduced so far in our BJU curriculum.**

I put out pretracers from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Last week, all Charger wanted to do was write on the tracer pages, so I think he will like this one, too. I honestly dont think he even noticed this one on the shelf yet.

Uppercase Lowercase E sorting mats

I was working with Mini Cooper on the S is for Star sorting printable I put out last week and found out that there was a 'problem' with the concept for her. She kept looking for places to put each of her letters. She had covered each of the stars and didnt know where to put the other stars. She wouldnt put stars on top of each other, either. So, this week I made mats that had a place for each Elephant. Its a letter/size sorting all in one. She liked it much better.

MATH

Elephant and peanuts cards and counters.

Unfortunately, no one took this off the shelf yet so I do not have action shots. I made a card for each number 1-9 and included the needed amount of peanuts to 'feed' each elephant. I thought for sure the peanuts would be a huge draw *sigh.* Maybe next week! In case you do not have or want to get peanuts-or your child is allergic, I have included printable peanuts in my set.

Elephant Number Matching

A fairly simple game that Mini Cooper is loving. When she first saw it was late in the evening but she would not let me put her jammies on until I let her play the game. I am planning to pick up some magnets to attach to the circles when I am in town today, I dont like how they slide all around.

Peanut Addition Strips

This game includes 10 adding strips focusing on 1+. 1+1 through 1+10 are included in the pack along with elephants numbered 2-11. I put this on the shelf yesterday, but Mustang was really more into language trays so I will probably present this to her on Monday. She loves when she figures out she can do something 'new' and I am sure that adding will be exciting for her!

SENSORY

Size ordering elephants. I picked these up on a missions trip to Ghana 15 years ago and was so excited to FINALLY have a reason to put them on my shelves. The kids loved them.

Mini Cooper just played with them. It was cute :).

Artish

The kids really like using stickers for the letter pages, and I remembered I had some elephant stickers I got on clearance at Hobby Lobby last fall. WELL, it appears I had SIX stickers. That ment they each got three for their page. Wowie! So I broke out the stamper markers (that are about 20 years old and STILL work-seriously I got them the summer I worked at kids camps which was in 1996). They loved them, so not all was lost. E is for Everyone do your own thing :).

I love all these activities. My daughter is going to be doing a week on elephants here soon. I will have to remember to include these activities for the boys. Thank you for your hard work on the printables and for sharing them!

I noticed that you asked Rebecca a question in regards to the animal babies/parent match. I don't know if this is the source she used or if she's gotten back to you yet, but there is a good one at this link underneath Animal Babies Memory

I love your E is for Elephant activities! I featured the photo of your elephant and peanuts cards and counters basket along with the links to your printables at http://ourcountryroad.blogspot.com/2011/07/letter-e-preschool-and-kindergarten.html